Mmmmmm. Indians to sell cow urine as soft drink.

An Indian organization is launching a soft drink made of cow urine. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Here’s the story from the U.K. Times of London:

Does your Pepsi lack pep? Is your Coke not the real thing? India’s Hindu nationalist movement apparently has the answer: a new soft drink made from cow urine.

The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called “gau jal”, or “cow water” – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”.

“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,” he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. “Its USP will be that it’s going to be very healthy. It won’t be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins.”

If this product is successful, the same company intends to launch a delicious line of cow pies in four fabulous flavors — Holstein, Brahma, Guernsey and Jersey.

The hadeeth referred to by the questioner is a saheeh hadeeth, in which it says that some people came to Madeenah and fell sick. The Prophet told them to drink the milk and urine of camels, and they recovered and grew fat. In the story it also says that they apostatized and killed the camel-herder, then the Muslims caught them and executed them. Narrated by al-Bukhaari (2855) and Muslim (1671).

With regard to the health benefits of drinking the milk and urine of camels, they are many, and they are well known to the earlier generations of medical science and they have been proven by modern scientific research.”